Pelvis, in human anatomy, basin-shaped complex of bones that connects the trunk and the legs, supports and balances the trunk, and contains and supports the intestines, the urinary bladder, and the internal sex organs. The pelvis consists of paired hipbones, connected in front at the pubic

dinosaur: Stegosauria: …double row of large diamond-shaped bony plates on the back. A controversy as to their purpose and how they were arranged has raged ever since the first Stegosaurus specimen was collected (1877, Colorado, U.S.). The evidence and a general consensus argue in favour of the traditional idea that the plates…

Bony tongue, any of several heavy-bodied tropical river fishes, family Osteoglossidae, covered with large, hard, mosaic-like scales except on the head. The largest member of the family, the arapaima, paiche, or pirarucu (Arapaima gigas) of South America, may be about 2.4 metres (8 feet) long and

Joan Sutherland: Her accompanist and vocal coach, Richard Bonynge, who had worked with her in Sydney, was convinced that her future lay in the florid coloratura repertoire even though Covent Garden was training her as a dramatic Wagnerian soprano. In 1954 she married Bonynge, and with his help and encouragement she began…

M’banza Congo, city, northwestern Angola. It is situated on a low plateau about 100 miles (160 km) southeast of Nóqui, which is the nearest point on the Congo River. Originally known as Mbanza Kongo, it was the capital of the Kongo kingdom from about 1390 until 1914, when the kingdom was broken up

Boobook, (Ninox novaeseelandiae), small owl species classified with elf owls, hawk owls, and burrowing owls in the subfamily Surniinae. The boobook is common in various habitats throughout Australia, New Zealand, the Lesser Sunda Islands, and the islands of Timor and New Guinea. However, it is

Booby, any of six or seven species of large tropical seabirds constituting the family Sulidae (order Pelecaniformes or Suliformes). They vary in length from about 65 to 85 cm (25–35 inches). The red-footed booby (Sula sula) and the masked, or blue-faced, booby (S. dactylatra) are wide-ranging in

Bongo, (Tragelaphus eurycerus), the largest, most colourful, and most sociable of the African forest antelopes, belonging to the spiral-horned antelope tribe Tragelaphini (family Bovidae). It is also the third heaviest antelope, after the related giant eland and common eland. The bongo has short,

dictionary: From 1604 to 1828: …medical work by Oswald Gabelkhouer, The Boock of Physicke, published at Dort, in the Netherlands. As he had been away from England for many years and had forgotten much of his English, A.M. sometimes merely put English endings on Latin words. When friends told him that Englishmen would not understand…

rat kangaroo: … rat kangaroo, or boodie (B. lesueur), which has a thicker, non-crested tail, is the only member of the kangaroo group to dig burrows. It was formerly widespread in South and Western Australia but is today restricted to a few offshore islands. The Northern bettong (B. tropica) has pale gray…

Paul Thomas Anderson: …praised, Anderson’s breakout effort was Boogie Nights (1997). Starring Burt Reynolds, Julianne Moore, and Mark Wahlberg—as well as benefitting from scene-stealing performances by Hall, Reilly, and Hoffman—Boogie Nights traces the rise, fall, and resurgence of an adult film star. The story earned Anderson his first Academy Award nomination for best…

Boogie-woogie, heavily percussive style of blues piano in which the right hand plays riffs (syncopated, repeating phrases) against a driving pattern of repeating eighth notes (ostinato bass). It began to appear at the beginning of the 20th century and was associated with the southwestern

Boojum tree, (Idria columnaris), tree that is the only species of its genus, in the family Fouquieriaceae. The boojum tree is an unusual plant found native only in the deserts of Baja California and Sonora, Mexico. Fancifully, it resembles a slender upside-down carrot, up to 15 metres (50 feet)

Book, published work of literature or scholarship; the term has been defined by UNESCO for statistical purposes as a “non-periodical printed publication of at least 49 pages excluding covers,” but no strict definition satisfactorily covers the variety of publications so identified. Although the

mica: Origin and occurrence: …large crystals are often called books; these may measure up to several metres across. In most rocks, micas occur as irregular tabular masses or thin plates (flakes), which in some instances appear bent. Although some mica grains are extremely small, all except those constituting sericitic masses have characteristic shiny cleavage…

Toni Morrison: …the Who’s Got Game? series, The Book About Mean People (2002), and Please, Louise (2014). She also penned Remember (2004), which chronicles the hardships of black students during the integration of the American public school system; aimed at children, it uses archival photographs juxtaposed with captions speculating on the thoughts…

Iris Murdoch: … (1983), The Good Apprentice (1985), The Book and the Brotherhood (1987), The Message to the Planet (1989), and The Green Knight (1993). Murdoch’s last novel, Jackson’s Dilemma (1995), was not well received; some critics attributed the novel’s flaws to the Alzheimer’s disease with which she had been diagnosed in 1994.…

library: Vehicles for catalogs: …the same form as the books they listed; being made of the same material, the catalog was an extra item of the collection itself. The earliest catalogs of the great national and scholarly libraries were in book form, with handwritten entries and spaces for new additions. The main problem of…

Book Cliffs, geological feature of east-central Utah and western Colorado, U.S. Beginning near Helper, Utah, and joined at Green River, Utah, by a second escarpment, the Roan Cliffs, the 2,000-foot- (610-metre-) tall mountain wall, winds a 250-mile (400-km) course along the Tavaputs and Roan

Book club, marketing service whereby potential book buyers subscribe to free periodicals describing available books, which are sold by order or by “negative option” (see below) and then distributed by mail. The first book club, established in Germany (1919), reprinted and distributed classics. In

Book collecting, acquisition of books, not only as texts but also as objects desirable for such qualities as their age, scarcity, historical significance, value, beauty, and evidence of association with some important person. Exercising knowledge, taste, and critical judgment, the book collector

circulatory system: Arthropoda: …Limulus, has a series of book gills (gills arranged in membranous folds) on either side of the body into which blood from the ventral sinus passes for oxygenation prior to return to the heart. The largely terrestrial arachnids may have book lungs that occupy a similar position in the circulatory…

calligraphy: Origins to the 8th century ce: …of handwriting is that between book hands and documentary hands. The former, used especially for the copying of literature, aimed at clarity, regularity, and impersonality and often made an effect of beauty by their deliberate stylization. Usually they were the work of professionals. Outstanding calligraphy is not common among papyrus…

Pierre Bonnard: A new phase in book illustration was inaugurated with Bonnard’s decoration of the pages in Paul Verlaine’s book of Symbolist poetry, Parallèlement, published by Vollard in 1900. He undertook the illustration of other books during the 1900s.

Bokm?l, a literary form of Norwegian developed by the gradual reform of written Danish in conformity to Norwegian usage. Bokm?l means in Norwegian “book language” and Riksm?l approximately “official language” (meaning literally, “language of the

insect: Annotated classification:
Order Psocoptera (booklice or psocids)
Small or minute insects with long filiform antennae, delicate membranous wings (though many are wingless), head with Y-shaped epicranial suture, enlarged post-clypeus (sclerite on the face); maxilla with a rodlike lacinia (inner lobe) partly sunk into head capsule; labial palps much reduced;…

Book lung, form of respiratory organ found in certain air-breathing arachnid arthropods (scorpions and some spiders). Each book lung consists of a series of thin plates that are highly vascular (i.e., richly supplied with blood) and are arranged in relation to each other like the pages of a book.

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: Scriptures: …he declared to be the Book of Abraham, were incorporated into the Pearl of Great Price. The Doctrines and Covenants contains Smith’s ongoing revelations through 1844. The editions of the Utah church and of the Community of Christ add the revelations of their respective church presidents (who, like Smith, are…

mathematics: Mathematics in the 9th century: …book explaining Hindu arithmetic, the Book of Addition and Subtraction According to the Hindu Calculation. In another work, the Book of Restoring and Balancing, he provided a systematic introduction to algebra, including a theory of quadratic equations. Both works had important consequences for Islamic mathematics. Hindu Calculation began a tradition…

floral decoration: 17th century: …de fleurs d’après nature (Book of All Kinds of Flowers from Nature) accurately portray flowers from a horticultural standpoint and at the same time show prototypes of display. These floral arrangements are freer and more airy than those of the Low Countries and yet suggest Baroque opulence. Flora ouerocultura…

Stephen Vincent Benét: A Book of Americans (1933), poems written with his wife, the former Rosemary Carr, brought many historical characters to life for American schoolchildren. Benét’s preoccupation with historical themes was also the basis for Western Star, an ambitious epic verse narrative on American history that Benét…

Aneirin: …in a manuscript known as The Book of Aneirin, which dates from about 1265. The language of the poem is direct for the most part, although simile and metaphor are skillfully used, and alliteration and internal rhyme abound. The poem praises the courage and prowess of Aneirin’s contemporaries in the…

A.J.M. Smith: …series of anthologies beginning with The Book of Canadian Poetry (1943), Smith approached Canadian literature in a scholarly manner that set the tone for modern Canadian criticism. Later anthologies include The Blasted Pine (1957; rev. ed. 1967), edited with F.R. Scott, a collection of Canadian satiric and invective verse; and…

Judaism: Major medieval Hebrew collections: …of the most important were The Book of Comfort by Nissim ben Jacob ben Nissim of Al-Qayrawān (11th century) and The Book of Delight by Joseph ben Meir ibn Zabara of Spain (end of the 12th century). The former, composed in Judeo-Arabic, is a collection of some 60 moralizing tales…

Joan Didion: …It as It Lays (1970), A Book of Common Prayer (1977), Democracy (1984), and The Last Thing He Wanted (1996; film 2020) and the essays Salvador (1983), Miami (1987), and Where I Was From (2003). Essays on U.S. politics, including the presidential election of 2000, were collected in Political Fictions…

David Kimhi: His own great work, the Sefer mikhlol (“Book of Completeness”), was originally intended to comprise a grammar and a lexicon of the Hebrew language. The latter, however, appeared as a separate work, Sefer ha-shorashim (“Book of the Roots”). (The grammar, edited and translated by William Chomsky, was published in 1933;…

E.L. Doctorow: …history first became apparent in The Book of Daniel (1971; film 1983), a fictionalized treatment of the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for espionage in 1953. In Ragtime (1975; film 1981), historical figures share the spotlight with characters emblematic of the shifting social dynamics of early 20th-century America.

Turkish literature: Epic and the emergence of the a?ik: The Book of Dede Korkut), which has survived in two 16th-century manuscripts. The actual date of the work is unknown. At least one of the tales was already circulating in written form in the early 14th century, and Central Asian sources suggest that the shaman-bard…

Judaism: Major medieval Hebrew collections: …of Al-Qayrawān (11th century) and The Book of Delight by Joseph ben Meir ibn Zabara of Spain (end of the 12th century). The former, composed in Judeo-Arabic, is a collection of some 60 moralizing tales designed to comfort the author’s father-in-law on the loss of a son. Belonging to a…

Fernando Pessoa: …of Livro do desassossego (The Book of Disquiet), a diary-like work of poetic fragments that Pessoa worked on through the last two decades of his life and that remained unfinished at his death. It was published together for the first time in 1982 and brought him worldwide attention; a…

Meister Eckhart: …of his life is the Book of Divine Consolation, dedicated to the Queen of Hungary. The other two treatises were The Nobleman and On Detachment. The teachings of the mature Eckhart describe four stages of the union between the soul and God: dissimilarity, similarity, identity, breakthrough. At the outset, God…

Philip Pullman: …three planned installments in his The Book of Dust series. It continues the story of Lyra, chronicling her life both before and after His Dark Materials. However, rather than describing it as a prequel or sequel, Pullman claimed that The Book of Dust trilogy was an “equel.” The second book…

Denzel Washington: …in the postapocalyptic action drama The Book of Eli and collaborated again with Scott on the action thriller Unstoppable. He subsequently portrayed a rogue CIA agent in South Africa in the spy thriller Safe House (2012) before giving an Oscar-nominated performance in Flight (2012) as a heroic airplane pilot hiding…

John Banville: The Book of Evidence (1989) is a murder mystery and the first of a trilogy centred on the character Freddie Montgomery. Ghosts (1993) and Athena (1995) completed the trilogy. The Untouchable (1997), along with Eclipse (2000) and its sequel, Shroud (2002), are novels that tell…

Jeremy Bentham: Mature works: …John Stuart Mill and the Book of Fallacies (1824) by Peregrine Bingham. The services of étienne Dumont in recasting as well as translating the works of Bentham were still more important.

Miyamoto Musashi: …on strategy—Gorin no sho (The Book of Five Rings), which dealt with the martial experience both individually and militarily—on his deathbed. Following its first English translation in 1974, the book was seriously studied by executives in the West in order to better understand Japanese management techniques and strategies.

Andromeda Galaxy: …as 965 ce, in the Book of the Fixed Stars by the Islamic astronomer al-?ūfī, and rediscovered in 1612, shortly after the invention of the telescope, by the German astronomer Simon Marius, who said it resembled the light of a candle seen through a horn. For centuries astronomers regarded the…

Valley of the Kings: In the “Book of Gates,” giant serpents guard the portals through which the sun has to pass as strange demons help or hinder the boat on its way. Other funerary compositions include the “Book of Day” and the “Book of Night,” which depict Nut, the sky-goddess, spread…

R. Crumb: In October 2009 Crumb released The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb. The work, begun in 2004, was originally intended as a parody of the first book of the Bible. However, as Crumb delved deeper into the source material, he decided to adhere to the literal text to create…

Ni?ām al-Mulk: The Seyāsat-nāmeh:
Shortly before his assassination and at Malik-Shāh’s request, Ni?ām al-Mulk wrote down his views on government in the Seyāsat-nāmeh. In this remarkable work, he barely refers to the organization of the dewan (administration) because he had been able, with the help of his well-chosen…

Hillary Clinton: Secretary of state and 2016 presidential candidate: …wrote (with her daughter, Chelsea) The Book of Gutsy Women: Favorite Stories of Courage and Resilience. The four-part documentary Hillary (2020) chronicles Clinton’s life and career.

Nestorius: Life and career: …his exile, he wrote the Book of Heraclides of Damascus, which he intended as a defense of his teaching and a history of his life. The sole treatise from his pen to have survived, it was discovered in 1895 in a Syriac translation. Nestorius died in Panopolis about 451, protesting…

Jean Fouquet: …most famous works: a large Book of Hours with about 60 full-page miniatures, 40 of which are among the great treasures of the chateau of Chantilly; and the diptych from Notre Dame at Melun (c. 1450) with Chevalier’s portrait (Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin) on one panel and a Madonna…

Book of hours, devotional book widely popular in the later Middle Ages. The book of hours began to appear in the 13th century, containing prayers to be said at the canonical hours in honour of the Virgin Mary. The growing demand for smaller such books for family and individual use created a

Hishām ibn al-Kalbī: …Arabs; and Kitāb al-a?nām (The Book of Idols), in which he discusses the gods of the pre-Islamic Arabs. The discussions in Kitāb al-a?nām are supplemented by relevant excerpts from pre-Islamic poetry. His writings are of particular importance for having preserved valuable information on Arabian antiquities and tribal customs and…

Paul Auster: The Book of Illusions (2002) traces a writer’s immersion in the oeuvre of an obscure silent film star as he copes with his grief at the deaths of his wife and children in a plane crash. Travels in the Scriptorium (2007) centres on an unidentified…

Jorge Luis Borges: Life: …de los seres imaginarios (1967; The Book of Imaginary Beings), almost erase the distinctions between the genres of prose and poetry. His later collections of stories include El informe de Brodie (1970; Doctor Brodie’s Report), which deals with revenge, murder, and horror, and El libro de arena (1975; The Book…

Tuatha Dé Danann: The Leabhar Gabhála (Book of Invasions), a fictitious history of Ireland from the earliest times, treats them as actual people, and they were so regarded by native historians up to the 17th century. In popular legend they have become associated with the numerous fairies still supposed to inhabit…

Harold Bloom: …appeared in his commentary on The Book of J (1990), published with David Rosenberg’s translations of selected sections of the Pentateuch. In it Bloom speculated that the earliest known texts of the Bible were written by a woman who lived during the time of David and Solomon and that the…

Joseph Herman Hertz: His anthology, A Book of Jewish Thoughts (1920), was translated into several languages and went through many editions. In 1925 he was made a governor of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Hertz, a zealous Zionist, played an important role in eliciting the Balfour Declaration in 1917 (a…

Ameen Rihani: …the Arab intellectual community, and The Book of Khalid (1911), an English-language novel, considered to be the first by an Arab. The Book of Khalid concerns the immigration of two Lebanese boys to New York City and their subsequent spiritual evolution. It was illustrated by Rihani’s friend Khalil Gibran and…

Anglo-Norman literature: Religious and didactic writings.: …substantial Anglo-Norman prose work, “The Book of Kings,” was written in England, as were many versions of the Psalter. Sanson de Nanteuil translated into verse the proverbs of Solomon, with commentary; and in the 13th century Robert of Greatham wrote the “Sunday Gospels” for a noble lady. The same century…

Shāh-nāmeh, (Persian: “Book of Kings”) celebrated work of the epic poet Ferdowsī, in which the Persian national epic found its final and enduring form. Written for Sultan Ma?mūd of Ghazna and completed in 1010, the Shāh-nāmeh is a poem of nearly 60,000 verses, mainly based on the Khvatay-nāmak, a

encyclopaedia: Children’s encyclopaedias: … (1910) in Great Britain and The Book of Knowledge (1912) in the United States. The contents comprised vividly written and profusely illustrated articles; because the system of article arrangement was obscure, much of the success of the work as a reference tool resulted from its splendidly contrived index, which remains…

Rosario Castellanos: …novel, Oficio de tinieblas (1962; The Book of Lamentations), re-creates an Indian rebellion that occurred in the city of San Cristóbal de las Casas in the 19th century, but Castellanos sets it in the 1930s, when her own family suffered from the reforms brought about by Lázaro Cárdenas del Rio…

Haim Na?man Bialik: Ravnitzky) and edited Sefer ha-agadah (1907/08–1910/11; The Book of Legends), a collection of traditional Jewish homilies and legends. He also edited the poems of the medieval poet and philosopher Ibn Gabirol and began a popular modern commentary on the Mishna (the codification of Jewish oral laws).

Llandaff: The Book of Llandaff, compiled under Bishop Urban, was a record of privileges and grants made to the see in recognition of its ecclesiastical status. The cathedral lost a great deal of its revenue after the Reformation and fell into decay; in the 18th century the…

John Foxe: …Puritan preacher and author of The Book of Martyrs, a graphic and polemic account of those who suffered for the cause of Protestantism. Widely read, often the most valued book beside the Bible in the households of English Puritans, it helped shape popular opinion about Roman Catholicism for at least…

Péter Nádas: …famous novel, Emlékiratok k?nyve (A Book of Memories), a massive Proustian work of intertwining narratives centring on an expatriate Hungarian living in East Berlin in the 1970s. The book, which took him over a decade to write, was not approved by Hungarian censors for publication until 1986.

Trey Parker: …later wrote the satirical musical The Book of Mormon (2011), about Mormon missionaries in Uganda. The Broadway production, which Parker codirected, received numerous Tony Awards, including best musical. Additionally, its original cast album won a Grammy Award in 2012. In 2017 he voiced the character of a villain—a former 1980s…

The Book of Negroes, novel by Lawrence Hill, published in 2007 (under the title Someone Knows My Name in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand). Hill’s third novel, it is a work of historical fiction inspired by the document called the “Book of Negroes,” a list of Black Loyalists who fled

New Zealand literature: Poetry: A Book of New Zealand Verse (1945; rev. ed. 1951), edited by Allen Curnow, is usually held to mark the advent of New Zealand literature’s “postcolonial” phase. It was Modernist, nationalist, and critically sophisticated, and Curnow’s long, elegant introduction set a new standard for the…

American literature: Deep image poets: His vatic sequence, The Book of Nightmares (1971), and the quieter poems in Mortal Acts, Mortal Words (1980) are among the most rhetorically effective works in contemporary poetry.

nonsense verse: …could be considered 1846, when The Book of Nonsense was published; this was a collection of limericks composed and illustrated by the artist Edward Lear, who first created them in the 1830s for the children of the earl of Derby. This was followed by the inspired fantasy of Lewis Carroll,…

mirror for princes: Gregory I’s Pastoral Care (6th century): though centred on the role of bishops, rather than secular lords, Gregory’s emphasis on humility as a key virtue of those holding worldly power, on the moral temptations of secular might, and on the need to provide moral leadership by example…

Federico García Lorca: Early poetry and plays: Libro de poemas (“Book of Poems”), an uneven collection of predominantly modernista poems culled from his juvenilia, followed in 1921. Both efforts disappointed Lorca and reinforced his inherent resistance to publication, a fact that led to frequent delays in the publication and production of his…

Christopher Columbus: The fourth voyage and final years: …in mind, to compile his Book of Privileges, which defends the titles and financial claims of the Columbus family, and his apocalyptic Book of Prophecies, which includes several biblical passages. The first compilation seems an odd companion to the second, yet both were closely linked in the admiral’s own mind.…

French literature: Prose fiction: …Le Livre de Prométhéa (1983; The Book of Promethea)—learned, funny, sparkling, and innovative—achieved its writer’s ambition to make a distinctive model of the desiring feminine subject, within but not consumed by the inherited forms of writing and culture. Marguerite Duras’s autobiographical novels L’Amant (1984; The Lover) and L’Amant de la…

Christopher Columbus: Written sources: …of his sensibilities is the Book of Prophecies, a collection of pronouncements largely taken from the Bible and seeming to bear directly on his role in the western voyages; the book was probably compiled by Columbus and his friend the Carthusian friar Gaspar Gorricio between September 1501 and March 1502,…

The Proverbs, an Old Testament book of “wisdom” writing found in the third section of the Jewish canon, known as the Ketuvim, or Writings. The book’s superscription, “The proverbs of Solomon. . . ,” is not to say that it as a whole or even individual proverbs should be credited to King Solomon, for

Revelation to John, last book of the New Testament. It is the only book of the New Testament classified as apocalyptic literature rather than didactic or historical, indicating thereby its extensive use of visions, symbols, and allegory, especially in connection with future events. Revelation to

Epanagoge: …Slavic codes including the Russian Book of Rules, an administrative code.

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